Venice train depot offers a window to history

In 2003, the late Rollins Coakley led the charge to restore the abandoned depot, which the Seaboard Air Line Railway built for $47,500 in 1927.

By DALE WHITE

While their wives went shopping in downtown Venice recently, Dick Calo of Nokomis and his visiting brother from Chicago, Charlie, decided to go on their own exploratory excursion.

A frequent user of the Legacy Trail, Calo had passed by the historic train depot now used as a museum by the Venice Area Historical Society many times but had not gone inside.

“I said, 'We need to go to the train station,' ” Calo said.

After he and his brother got a tour from docent Mike Murphy, Calo praised what the society has done with the place. “It's very interesting. I love it.”

In 2003, the late Rollins Coakley led the charge to restore the abandoned depot, which the Seaboard Air Line Railway built for $47,500 in 1927.

“He was like a bull terrier,” society past president Sue Chapman remembered. “He got hold of this project and would not turn loose.”

Coakley and his volunteers raised $2.3 million and saved what is now considered a community jewel.

Sarasota County, which owns the site, now uses part of the former depot as a bus station while the society uses the interior as a museum.

The society built a doorway to unite what were, until 1965, separate waiting rooms for blacks and whites. Those rooms are now devoted to local history and filled with artifacts, some as small as a circus popcorn box and others as large as a hand railcar.

“I've always been interested in history,” Murphy said. “I love numbers and dates. I thought becoming a docent would be a nice civic thing to do.”

So far, about 24,000 visitors have signed the society's guestbooks — with perhaps thousands more coming but neglecting to leave their signatures.

“We're making this a tourism destination,” Chapman said.

For a two-room museum, the society packs in lots of history.

Wall displays are devoted to various chapters of the Venice story: the Venice Army Air Base during World War II, the winter campus of the Kentucky Military Institute, the Ringling Circus era, the creation of the Intracoastal Waterway. . .

Numerous artifacts pertain to the era of railway passenger service, including the original platform window where “colored” passengers bought their tickets. (White passengers paid at the inside ticket booth.)

When the society was working on the depot's restoration, “someone stole the ticket window,” Murphy said. After newspaper articles appeared about the society's eagerness to get it back, “one day they came here and it was sitting on the lawn.”

Plenty of circus and KMI memorabilia are also on display.

The 200-member society maintains its office inside a restored Seaboard caboose on the property, where more exhibits can be seen.

It is currently working on plans to acquire a Pullman railway car, possibly one now stored in Parrish, and convert it to resemble one of the Pullmans that circus performers traveled in.

That project could require more than $100,000 in donations and be a while in coming, Chapman said. Yet she believes that, like the restored depot, it will happen — “all in good time.”